The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, ...

IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, ...

IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

Improvised Musical Interactions - OMax & Co

This project focuses on the development of improvised man-machine musical interactions. A new paradigm for interaction was invented at IRCAM and has been made available to the general public via the OMax software program.

Using machine learning techniques and formal languages, OMax learns in an unsupervised way from either a MIDI or an audio stream produced by a musician. The underlying process behind this interaction could be called "stylistic reinjection". The musician is continually kept informed by several sources providing complex feedback. He hears himself play, he listens to others while memorizing sound images that flow from the present towards the past. Using medium-term and long-term memory, these motifs, combined with even older images taken from the repertoire or musical culture, for example, can return to the present after undergoing several transformations, including one of the most common transformations in improvisation: formal recombination. OMax models this memory-based process and makes it possible to "reify" it, to make it heard on stage. It then re-injects musical figures taken from its short-term and long-term memory and reconstructs them in a manner that is both similar and innovative, providing the musician with stimuli that are familiar and stimulating.

This project has led to two new research projects: SoMax that explores the immediate reactivity of an artificial agent to its sound environment and Improtek (in collaboration with the EHESS) that explores the notion of guided improvisation in the framework of a specific scenario (e.g. a chord chart). The vocation of the ANR-funded project DyCI2 is to study the synthesis of these two different approaches with innovative artificial listening techniques.